J.S. Mill teaches us that all humans desire happiness. It is therefore right and good that a person should maximize her own happiness, develop a full life rich with various pleasures and containing only minimal pains, invest in herself, experiment with life, flourish. Mill encourages us to pursue these goals through all the stages of our lives. At the same time, he suggests that we are also morally obligated to maximize happiness not just for ourselves but for others too. One’s personal happiness matters little when placed up against the general happiness of a community. So a person can only live ethically by maximizing that which is most good for humans: happiness. Taking this moral duty seriously means dedicating as much time as possible toward the promotion of other persons‘ happiness. But what if one’s personal road to happiness does not run parallel to a life spent serving others? In other words, when self-interest and the duty to be selfless conflict, which should win out? This may in fact be the most fundamental question in utilitarian ethics, but sadly Mill is very unclear on this issue.
When I think of “utilitarian ethics,” I imagine a system whose main focus is selfless, individual action which seeks to benefit others in some way. Such an ethical system should require certain kinds of selfless actions, provide a philosophical foundation to justify these actions, define their scope, and perhaps even incentivize persons to act.
By selfless, individual actions, I mean actions which:
A) individuals perform (as opposed to governments),
B) are carried out for the good of others (as opposed to for the good of the individual performing the action), and
C) may require varying degrees of personal sacrifice.
I call this an outward-facing, personal ethics. It strongly encourages, perhaps requires, that the agent promote the happiness of others. This is opposed to an inward-facing, hedonistic utilitarianism which encourages the agent to seek out and maximize her own happiness. Mill has much to say about the latter ethics and less (but not nothing) to say about the former. Does he take outward-facing, personal ethics seriously? If not, can we really call his ethics “ethics” at all?
Mill, who generally takes great pains to be clearly understood, muddles up this whole question to a surprising degree. No doubt, the question of where our duties to ourselves cease and where the duties to others begin is a sticky one. It’s a swamp, a quagmire, a tangled mess. It has flummoxed many a philosopher, and Mill is no exception. Whenever he ventures into the swamp, he immediately realizes the danger and backs right back out again as fast as he can. Before he does, he says just enough to leave the reader puzzled.
Chapter II of Utilitarianism is a fine example of this muddle. It contains some forceful and, at time, grandiose language about the importance of an outward-facing ethics. Self sacrifice for the good of others is “the highest virtue which can be found in man”.1 Actions are right in relation to how much happiness they produce2 (a clear injunction to maximize communal happiness). His emphasis on the importance of human dignity3 and his definition of a happy life4 are of course applicable to the individual focusing on her own happiness, but they could also be ethical calls to arms, demanding that we fight for the restoration of dignity to those who have lost it (through poverty, poor health, or unhappy circumstance), and to lessen the pains felt by those less fortunate than ourselves. He decrees: “I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”5
Yet in the same chapter, Mill takes pains to water down this outward-facing, ethical duty. It is, after all, unreasonable to require the average person to put her own happiness on hold, to require that she set as her life-long goal the enhancement of communal happiness. “The great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and authorised expectations, of any one else.”6 So we need not, it seems, concern ourselves with the happiness of individuals outside our tiny circle of self and loved ones. So long as we don’t violate the rights of others, we meet our moral obligation to them. Shortly after the “benevolent spectator” line, he demonstrates his skill at back-pedaling: “It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them.”7 So though he issues the moral injunction that we must be impartial when deciding whose happiness to promote (which could mean it is indeterminate as to whose happiness we must promote, or could imply that the combined happiness of many persons should always outweigh one’s personal happiness), he lets us off the hook immediately after by telling us that 99% of our actions are exempt from the injunction because these actions not part of the moral sphere. What seemed a few minutes ago to be a dynamic and insistent moral creed has now been diluted. The reader is left to question: what exactly is my moral duty? Is there a principle which tells me when it is appropriate to focus on myself and when I am obligated to do the opposite? Where does the moral sphere begin and end? Whose duty am I obligated to promote? Do I meet the utilitarian standard if I live a full and bountiful life that does not include selfless action toward the wider community, or is such a life actually unethical?
An orthodox utilitarian might argue that since it is ethical to maximize that which is most good, and we can only fully maximize happiness if we help as many individuals as possible achieve it, we are ethically bound to adopt an outward-facing, personal utilitarianism, to maximize the greatest happiness for the greatest number. As for our own personal happiness: if we include in our utilitarian calculus the needs of others, our own happiness shrinks down in importance. It is no more than a single datum in the desirability equation, while the happiness of others weighs heavily on the scale. Such an ethic would require us to make daily sacrifices (both short-term and long-term) for the benefit of others. But Mill, who does not wish to upend our personal lives by injecting an unrealistic utilitarian standard into our every waking action, exempts from the utilitarian equation 99% of human action, leaving us free to structure our lives as we wish. As Mill put it, “there is a standard of altruism to which all should be required to come up, and a degree beyond it which is not obligatory, but meritorious.”8 So long as we don’t harm others through our daily actions, it seems we need call forth the standard of (outward-facing) utilitarianism only when we are faced with purely “moral” questions, which is not often.
In this way Mill’s utilitarianism provides us with guidance when we are faced with obvious moral dilemmas (should I cheat on an exam, should I refrain from telling a friend about harmful gossip, should I commit suicide, etc.). His utilitarianism instructs us, in these situations, to ask which option produces the greater net utility for all parties involved, and to pursue that option. In this narrow context, his system offers the individual a practical, outward-facing, moral philosophy. But what about questions about the broader structuring of a moral life: which career should I choose, how should I dedicate my time and resources, how generous should I be, etc.? In the non-stop chaos of daily life, it becomes easy to believe that these are not moral questions at all, but practical or economic questions (“I will choose the career which pays the most; I will dedicate my time to work, family, and hobbies; I will be as generous as possible within the confines of my own self-interest”). If utilitarianism does in fact require us to promote the happiness of others, these questions take on a deep moral significance. After all, every day I spend working on a job which pays me well but does not contribute to the general happiness is a day I cannot spend working toward a nobler goal; every minute I dedicate to water color painting is a minute not spent volunteering at a food bank; every dime I save for myself is a dime I cannot give to a hungry person. Mill does not necessarily want us to see these as moral questions at all; such questions are outside Mill’s sphere of morality altogether. But couldn’t we just as easily argue that an outward-facing utilitarian ethics will require an entire lifetime of selfless action, and that this ethics should rule over the 99% of actions Mill wishes to exempt from the moral sphere?
This indeterminacy as to where my obligation to serve myself ceases and my duty to serve others begins is one of the chief weaknesses in Mill’s ethical philosophy. We can easily find, in Mill, utilitarian justifications for pursuing our own gratification and the happiness of the broader community, without a penetrating analysis of how we should behave when these two goals conflict. Some critics of this utilitarian vagueness have suggested that we could simply justify any action with the claim that it promotes someone’s, anyone’s happiness in some way. D.G. Brown refers to this problem as the “deeper source of indeterminacy in what the Principle of Utility is.”9
Mill makes it clear that it is not only NOT wrong to pursue individual happiness, it is how we should live our lives. Our own happiness will naturally outweigh the happiness of the community 99% of the time, and Mill does not endeavor to develop a moral system which would require us to fight against this innate quality. So perhaps Mill isn’t much of a moralist, but more of a self-help author. He helps us refine our actions so that they aim toward, rather than against, our own happiness. This places his utilitarianism in the realm of personal development more than ethics. Mill wants us to believe that the principle of utility will not only guide us toward our own flourishing lives, but will also somehow motivate us to live virtuously. But for many persons, these are two completely separate (if not contradictory) goals. Since, for the individual, the utilitarian pursuit of happiness is really a theory of individual interest, it cannot act as the referee between our duty to serve others and our naked self-interest. For every statement Mill makes which demands that we focus on the general happiness of the community, he offers a contradictory statement which soothingly urges us not to worry about such lofty ideals, but to focus instead on building happy lives within our own household. Our duty to serve others (which in my opinion is one of the most crucial pieces of a utilitarian ethic) remains wishy-washy and ill-defined. Under Mill’s system, a person could dedicate her entire life to self-gratification, and at the end could claim, so long as she didn’t violate the rights of others, that she met the utilitarian standard. For me, this renders the system practically useless as an ethical system (though it may be worthwhile as a self-help doctrine). So while Mill’s principle of utility does offer us a guide for building a flourishing personal life, for seeking self-actualization, and for achieving a sense of peace and fulfillment after a life well-lived, I struggle to call any of this “ethics”.
Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh on Mill. I understand that he doesn’t advocate selfish behavior. It’s more that his system is incoherent. This incoherence leaves the individual free to do whatever feels right, and that’s why I don’t love calling this “ethics”. Maybe instead I should say it’s a very weak, watered-down ethics, one that permits a wide range of selfish behavior across an entire lifetime. It’s a system that sanctions the general ethics of the average American: focus strongly on family, but don’t feel obligated to develop a duty of care toward the community, unless doing so brings you pleasure. That ethical standard may be easy to meet, but it’s wreaking havoc on our planet, and (dare I say) might actually be unethical.
I want more from utilitarian ethics. I want a standard that is difficult to reach. I know the drawback: fewer people will reach it. But if ethics were as easy as “do whatever good you feel like doing in whatever direction feels right”, then it wouldn’t really be a field of study, it wouldn’t be something philosophers puzzle over. The art of loving oneself, loving one’s family and spouse, and cultivating hobbies is all important and worthwhile, don’t get me wrong. I just want more from an ethical system.
Related article:
Do I violate the utilitarian standard by loving my children?
Notes
- Whenever I quote from Mill’s Utilitarianism (1863), I will cite the chapter/paragraph in the following format: Mill, Utilitarianism, II/19. ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/2: “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/6: “Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them.” ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/14: “An existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.” ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/21. ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/23. ↩︎
- Mill, Utilitarianism, II/22. ↩︎
- Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), Part II: “It is not good that persons should be bound, by other people’s opinion, to do everything that they would deserve praise for doing. There is a standard of altruism to which all should be required to come up, and a degree beyond it which is not obligatory, but meritorious. It is incumbent on every one to restrain the pursuit of his personal objects within the limits consistent with the essential interests of others. What those limits are, it is the province of ethical science to determine; and to keep all individuals and aggregations of individuals within them, is the proper office of punishment and of moral blame. If in addition to fulfilling this obligation, persons make the good of others a direct object of disinterested exertions, postponing or sacrificing to it even innocent personal indulgences, they deserve gratitude and honour, and are fit objects of moral praise. So long as they are in no way compelled to this conduct by any external pressure, there cannot be too much of it; but a necessary condition is its spontaneity; since the notion of a happiness for all, procured by the self-sacrifice of each, if the abnegation is really felt to be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. Such spontaneity by no means excludes sympathetic encouragement; but the encouragement should take the form of making self-devotion pleasant, not that of making everything else painful. The object should be to stimulate services to humanity by their natural rewards; not to render the pursuit of our own good in any other manner impossible, by visiting it with the reproaches of other and of our own conscience. The proper office of those sanctions is to enforce upon every one, the conduct necessary to give all other persons their fair chance: conduct which chiefly consists in not doing them harm, and not impeding them in anything which without harming others does good to themselves.” In this light, our chief moral duty is simply not to do harm to others. ↩︎
- D.G. Brown, “What is Mill’s Principle of Utility,” in Mill’s Utilitarianism: Critical Essays, ed. David Lyons (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997), 19-21. ↩︎